Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Mr. Parfrey had been thinking about moving on, but understood that his hopes were faint. His world was too small, too enclosed. Colston’s would see the end of his career, after which the Bishop might graciously consent to accommodating him in an almshouse. He was turned five-and-forty, and Colston’s was it.

So he put the sketchbook into his case and left the ledge above the Avon to its own devices, still thinking about Morgan Tertius and his father. Odd, that the father shared the son’s amazing good looks, yet did not have the power to turn heads.

Now thatWilliam Henry was back in school, Richard had the leisure to pursue both a friendship and an intriguing proposition. Cousin James-the-druggist had been at him to do something better by his £3,000 than leave it in a bank for Quakers to make more from than he did-invest it in the three-per-cents, or at least invest it! urged the businesslike member of the Morgan clan.

He had met Mr. Thomas Latimer when he and William Henry had called into the Habitas workshop. The seven years during which Senhor Habitas had made Brown Besses for Tower Arms had earned him enough to retire in style, but no one who loved his craft as much as Tomas Habitas did would voluntarily retire. Rather, he had advertised in Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal that he was now available to make sporting guns, and sufficient custom had arrived to keep him just pleasantly occupied.

As Habitas explained after the introductions were performed, Mr. Latimer was a craftsman of a different kind: he made pumps.

“Mostly hand pumps, but ships are converting to chain pumps, and I have an Admiralty contract for making the chains themselves,” he said cheerfully. “The hand pump or the pole pump were lucky to lift a ton of bilge water in a week, whereas the chain pump can lift a ton of bilge water in a literal minute. Not to mention that its basis is a simple wooden structure a ship’s carpenter can build. All he needs to complete it is the brass chain.”

This was news to Richard, who found himself liking Mr. Thomas Latimer enormously. Not anybody’s picture of an engineer, he was short, plump, and always smiling-no gloomy Vulcan’s brow or blacksmith’s sinews about Mr. Latimer!

“I have bought Wasborough’s brass foundry in Narrow Wine Street,” he explained, “I confess purely because it contains one of Wasborough’s three fire engines.”

Of course Richard knew what a fire engine was, but once his son was back in school and the hours between seven and two were entirely his to fritter away, he had the time to discover a great deal more about this fascinating device.

The fire engine had been invented by Newcomen early in the century; this was the model that pumped water out of the Kingswood mines and drove the water wheels in William Champion’s copper and brass works on the Avon adjacent to the coal. Then James Watt had invented the separate steam condenser, which improved the efficiency of Newcomen’s engine so much that Watt had been able to interest the Birmingham iron and steel magnate Matthew Bolton in his idea. Watt had gone into partnership with Bolton and the pair of them maintained a complete monopoly on the manufacture of fire engines through a series of court cases which effectively prevented anyone else’s trying to compete; no other inventor could manage to get around incorporating Watt’s heavily patented separate steam condenser into his design.

Then Matthew Wasborough, a man in his middle twenties, had met another Bristolian youth named Pickard. Wasborough had come up with a system of pulleys and a fly wheel, Pickard had invented the crank, and together these three new concepts converted the reciprocal motion of a fire engine into circular motion. Instead of the driving force moving up and down, it now turned round and round.

“Water-wheels rotate and can make machinery rotate,” said Mr. Latimer as he conducted the sweating Richard through a place filled with furnaces, hearths, lathes, presses, fumes and noise. “But that,” said Latimer, pointing, “can make machinery rotate all by itself.” Richard gazed at a puffing, chugging monstrosity which occupied pride of place amid a series of spinning lathes, all turning brass into useful objects for ships; iron and ships did not mix, thanks to the corrosive effects of salt water on iron.

“May we go outside?” Richard shouted, ears ringing.

“When Wasborough combined his pulleys and fly wheel with the Pickard crank, they virtually eliminated the water-wheel,” Latimer continued as soon as they emerged onto the bank of the Froom just downriver of the Weare where the washerwomen gathered to launder. “It is brilliant, for it means that a manufactory does not need to be sited on a river. If coal is cheap, as it is in Bristol, steam is better than water-provided the engine has circular motion.”

“Then why have I never heard of Wasborough and Pickard?”

“Because of James Watt, who sued them because their fire engine contained his patented separate steam condenser. Watt also accused Pickard of stealing his idea for a crank, which is utter nonsense. Watt’s solution to the problem of circular motion is rack-and-pinion-he calls it ‘sun and planet motion’-but it is devilish slow and complicated. The moment he saw the patent for Pickard’s crank, he knew it was the right answer, and could not bear being beaten.”

“I had no idea engineering was so cutthroat. What happened?”

“Oh, after a lot of heartaches like losing the contract for a Government flour mill in Deptford, Wasborough died of sheer despair-he was all of eight-and-twenty-and Pickard fled to Connecticut. But I have worked out how to get around Watt’s patented separate steam condenser, so I intend to produce the Wasborough-Pickard model before their patents run out and Watt can nip in to collar them.”

“It is hard to believe that the most brilliant man in the world is a villain,” said Richard.

“James Watt,” said Thomas Latimer, not smiling, “is a twisted, stringy little Scotch bastard of no mean ability but a great deal more conceit! If it exists, then Watt has to have invented it-to hear him, God is his apprentice and Heaven is a haggis. Pah!”

Richard eyed the sluggish Froom and noted its cargo of flotsam. Ideal for snarling the buckets of a water-wheel, he thought. “I do see the advantage of steam over water,” he said. “We simply cannot continue to conduct industries requiring water power in the midst of cities. Fire engines with circular motion are the way of the future, Mr. Latimer.”

“Call me Tom. Consider this, Richard! Wasborough dreamed of incorporating one of his fire engines into a ship, thus enabling it to steer a course as straight as an arrow without regard for seas, currents or tacking and standing to find a favorable wind. His steam device would rotate the blades of a modified water-wheel on either side of the ship, propelling it along. Wonderful!”

“Wonderful indeed, Tom.”

When he got home he repeated this sentiment to an audience consisting of his father and Cousin James-the-druggist.

“Latimer is looking for investors,” he said then, “and I am thinking of contributing my three thousand pounds to the venture.”

“Ye’ll lose your money,” said Dick grimly.

Cousin James-the-druggist did not agree. “News of Latimer’s intentions has created much interest, Richard, and the man’s credentials are excellent, even though he is a newcomer to Bristol. I am thinking of investing a thousand in it myself.”

“Then ye’re both fools,” said Dick, a stand from which he refused to budge.

Head bent over his books, William Henry was sitting at Mr. James Thistlethwaite’s old table doing his homework; he had gone from a slate to quill and paper, and had enough of Richard’s painstaking patience to enjoy producing copperplate script minus the smears and blots which were the bane of most boys’ lives.